


When we left off

by GhostScript



Category: Travelers (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:08:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28214490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostScript/pseuds/GhostScript
Summary: feeling the void from the finale and unable to find anything that helped, I decided to write up a possible catch up with the travelers after the events in season 3. so spoiler, this is after grant goes back and attempt 2 is started.
Relationships: David Mailer/Marcy Warton | Traveler 3569
Comments: 5
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

Grant Mclaren managed to get out of the tower in just enough time before the first plane hit. And while his gut instinct begged him to stay at ground zero and help, he just kept running. He was completely overcome with emotion. He felt like his head could explode at any minute, and when he finally collapsed onto a bench in a nearby park to catch his breath, he started sobbing uncontrollably.   
He finally had time to really confront all of the sacrifice, and everything he’d lost, now that he didn’t have to be a leader anymore. It wasn’t up to him, he didn’t have to grit and bear it and be infallible anymore. Was he happy or terrified, or both?  
There was no way to tell if it worked, only time, and while he felt strangely free he was now rudderless and alone. His team; the people that had become his family- were gone. Destroyed in a timeline blackhole as if it had never existed. This whole time he’d only thought of them on occasion; while passing a coca cola bottle or work van or some other tiny trigger. He’d been so focused. So methodical.   
He held his head in his hands, and wiped the sweat from his face. What now?

For the next nineteen years, Grant travelled the world, fell in love, fell out of love, fathered two twin girls, got divorced, became a best selling author of a series of time travel fiction under the pseudonym “Grant Hall” titled Tourists, and settled in a humble loft apartment on the upper westside of New York. He was often lonely, his daughters now in college. He paid alimony and taxes, and fell asleep watching Netflix on the couch. He liked to think the world would be ok, and that in the end humanity would figure it out, but he wasn’t exactly hopeful. He tried to avoid the news. 

This particular night, a run of the mill Thursday, he’d gotten some Pad-Thai takeout from his favorite local place, loaded up the season finale of his favorite TV series, and sipped on a generous glass of Cabernet Sauvignon.   
When the episode started he noticed it was fuzzy, and cursed his wifi connection. He tried resetting his modem and reloaded the program, and it started to play fine and then grew distorted.   
Frustrated, he tried smacking the side of his television with a flat palm, but it was ineffective.   
“Hmph.” He muttered to himself, confused and growing more irritated.   
He switched the set off and started dialing the number for his service provider, which answered with an automated message and the warning of a twenty minute wait time.   
Grant gulped down some wine when suddenly he hear the buzz of static and the television screen blinked back on.   
“what the …” his voice trailed off. He pressed the power button on his remote rapidly, then checked the connection in the back and unplugged it from the outlet. It was still on.  
The screen flashed away from the show and stabilized. Now emblazoned before him on the black screen were clear words in a bright white font :

Find Your Team 

As quick as it appeared, the text was gone. Grant felt his stomach drop, the remote slipping from his hand. Was he dreaming? Was this dementia or cancer or was he going crazy? There was no way… Was the future sending him a new team? Had he failed? Was this the faction or something new? He finished his glass of wine and pulled out his laptop from the shelf under the coffee table and opened it up. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for; maybe news that seemed some how related, or similar reports of Netflix interruptions.   
Not finding anything that felt conclusive, he decided to try something else, and typed Marcy Warton into the search bar. She was a nurse- without the first traveler, she’d never been brain damaged. A link to her Facebook popped up and he clicked on it, but he couldn’t see it without logging in to his own. He had one- his daughters had insisted- but he’d never thought to use it.   
He wanted to leave the past behind, and stalking those people who were essentially strangers didn’t seem healthy.   
After four bad attempts at remembering his password, he was successfully logged in. There she was, smiling brightly in her profile. Should he send her a message? Would that be creepy? A friend request? What if he was wrong? Somehow she’d still found David, and that made him smile. He liked the idea of soul mates, somehow people in all timelines mysteriously bound to each other.   
He found a pen and paper to jot down the name of the hospital she worked at. Maybe he’d just drank too much. He stuck the paper onto his fridge with a magnet and went to bed. 

——————————————————————————————————————

Marcy woke up softly, to the smell of sweet sweat and the warmth of David’s arm around her. His gently snoring vibrating the hairs on the back of he neck. She scooted herself closer towards him and took a deep breath. David squeezed her gently and mumbled into her hair.  
“Can we sleep in today?” She asked.  
“I’d love to…” he replied, still very groggy, “but it’s my volunteer day at the needle exchange.”  
“Oh right, I forgot. I’ll make coffee.”  
She turned to kiss him before climbing over and towards the kitchen, filling the kettle and grabbing the ground beans from the cupboard.   
“You know you are welcome to come with me, if you want we could get those muffins you like on the way back?” He called out as he lumbered to the bathroom to pee.   
“Morning Glory.”  
“What?”  
“The muffins. The morning glory muffins.”  
She finished making the coffee, which made the whole kitchen smell homey and perfect. David grinned and took a seat on the barstool opposite the counter.   
“I know it isn’t an ideal date but you rarely get any time off lately and I-“  
“David, I’d love to.”  
“Cuz of the muffins, right?” he laughed  
“Yes, mainly.” She chuckled, holding her coffee with both hands, “but also it’s actually something I’d be meaning to do. You know, we end up with some of the same patients. And I think it might help if I got more involved with your side of things, to make my side of things more… more efficient? I mean, you really get to know them… and to them I’m just a scary nurse. You know?”  
“Have I told you how much I love you yet today?”  
“Tell me in muffins in a few hours.”

While David was getting dressed, Marcy stared out the window at the street below. How different it all was, and yet the same. There wasn’t a day that went by she wasn’t a little afraid that none of it was real. How could it be? Four years ago she just woke up again, and everything was O.K.   
The first year she thought it was just the heaven her brain created as she died. She had died. She put the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger. She could even remember what it tasted like, if she thought about it. Copper and salt and cold steel.   
It didn’t make sense for it to last this long and be so clear. Most of the time she sorta just forgot. There were so many little distractions. How was it possible, and why? Had the director taken pity? Was it capable?   
“All set?”   
“Mmmhmm” she nodded, grabbing her bag and heading out the door. 

The sun was bright, and they walked hand in hand through the park. It was the dog days of summer, her favorite time of year, now that she’d actually experienced seasons.   
The needle exchange program wasn’t new to her; it was a van that set up outside her hospital every Monday, and provided everything from clean needles and Narcan, to small bags of toiletries and snacks to those who needed. There were always debates amongst her colleagues if that was helping or enabling. Thursdays it set up on the corner of the street by the food bank.   
David introduced her to his friend Marcus who ran the program, and they went over the process. David was in his element, chatting with everyone his orbit. Showing them so much love just because they needed it. He wasn’t her David from before, he didn’t remember any of it. She determined that was actually for the best, because it spared him that pain. He was still David. She new he was still the most selfless and amazing man she had ever met. It’s why she made sure to be on his bus. So she could meet him again, under better circumstance, and make sure he would always be safe.   
Marcy was always a little surprised by the variety of people she treated for addiction; business women, fathers, teenagers… former athletes. Though the people at the exchange were mainly street folk. She followed in David’s footsteps and smiled at them, talked to them. Showed them respect.   
She was talking to a woman about their experience with the methadone program when she thought she saw a flash of a ghost in the corner of her eye. A young man in a long army green coat shuffled past.   
“Do you want to see a picture of my kid?” The woman asked   
“Uh sure, “ Marcy replied, snapping back to focus.  
The woman dug around in her bag for a few minutes then produced a photo of small boy around five years old. The picture has obviously been folded a few times and looked dingy and old.   
The woman started to tell Marcy all about he plans to see him when she felt a hand on her arm and Phillip was standing beside her “Sorry Daphne, would you mind if I stole my fiancé for a minute?”  
“Oh sure sure… fiancé huh? Well congratulations David! She sure is a sweet one.”  
Marcy waved her goodbye before turning to David, “Whats up?”  
“Would you mind if I borrowed your nurse skills for minute? There’s this kid- Phillip- he has this nasty looking needle mark- I mean it is gross. I wouldn’t ask but I’ve seen this kid out here a lot and I dunno I just feel so sad for him. I’ve tried to get him a detox bed before but he ran off before we got there. I feel like I’m close to getting through to him, yknow?”  
“Sure, sure” she nodded, feeling a little dizzy, “Probably just an infection.”   
She walked around the corner of the van, a mess of long blond hair and glassy blue eyes sitting on the curb, smoking a cigarette.   
“Phillip?”  
“Who are you?”  
David introduced them, “Phil, bud, this is my nurse friend I was telling you about. I just want her to take a look at your arm, ok? You can’t keep shooting up in that spot cuz my friend it looks like Freddy Kruger.”  
Phillip scoffed, “Well you said you won’t give me any clean works if I didn’t so I guess I don’t have a choice.”  
Marcy sat beside him, gingerly rolling up his sleeve. He had a few more tattoos than what she remembered, and was much skinner, but this was his host, there was no doubt. 3326 must not have had her luck, and never made it back. She hoped he’d gotten a new host and was happy somewhere. His arm was bruised and riddled with puncture marks; some healed, some scarred, mostly fresh. And one on the edge of his inner elbow that was extremely infected. But something must have changed if he hadn’t overdosed like he was supposed to. Strange how the butterfly effect works.   
Phillip’s head was limp and the cigarette in his mouth started to burn a hole in his t-shirt. “How much are you using, Phillip?”  
Phillip looked up almost confused at where he was, “look lady, I didn’t come here for a lecture.” He slurred.   
“Well, we need to clean that. And David is right, you absolutely cannot keep injecting in that spot. David do you have a first aid kit?”  
“Oh yeah of course” he replied, fetching her a small box of supplies from the back of the van. She swabbed and bandaged the area, took his temperature and advised antibiotics. When it was done, Phillip yanked his sleeve down, took his packet of fresh syringes and disappeared into the crowd.   
David seemed disappointed, and sighed, “His parents pretty much abandoned him. Didn’t even try to get him into rehab; they just washed their hands of it. Used to see him with his friend Steve, but Steve got clean and moved to the midwest to live with a cousin and sorta reset. I don’t think he has anyone else.”  
Marcy leaned in to give him a long hug, “It’s sweet of you to care, but you know you can’t save them all honey.”  
“I know, I know, but I don’t think I could ever stop wanting to.”  
“That’s why you are the best man I know and I can’t wait to marry you.”

———————————————————————————————————-

The University of Washington was made up of mostly meticulously made brick buildings, surrounding an expanse of greenery, trees, and Trevor’s favorite- the fountain. The science building was a few blocks away, on a busier street, in a newer plastic aesthetic structure, so whenever he’d get a chance to slip away he’d bring his packed lunch out to the fountain to eat and watch the birds and the students mingle. Despite living so many lifetimes, every day still seemed magical. It was all just an extra gift he wasn’t expecting. Like a slice of pie after a delicious meal.   
He’d managed to turn his grades around easy enough, with some summer school, and now he was on his engineering graduate program, which was pretty smooth sailing. Grace never came back, in this timeline his guidance counselor was an old hippie named Stu.  
In the evenings he read, or played with his cat, rode his bicycle around town, worked as a math tutor, and called to check in on Gary every few days. His hosts mother passed away the year before, of an embolism, so it was especially important and made him feel even more connected to him. He knew that pain.   
Fortuitously the years after he came back, society had become more progressive, and at least in college he didn’t have as much pressure to be something he wasn’t. He’d come out as asexual, and found a small group of friends in the LGBTQ-plus community that never made him feel like he wasn’t fulfilling his life. This was an easier option than explaining the truth. He was learning also, watching new movies and trying new foods.   
He didn’t know how or why he was back, but he didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth. He feared that if he reached out- tried to find Mac or the others- He would be overwritten. He also wasn’t even sure which timeline he was in. Alternate realities were boundless. He did miss them though; especially Phillip. He’d never told him how much he’d reminded him of one of his sons. He decided to let the chips fall as they may, and if it was meant for them to reconnect they would. 

——————————————————————————————————————

Carly threw on her fitted black blazer, smoothing out any wrinkles, took the last sip of her quad shot oat milk latte, and head out of her office toward the board room of the women’s advocacy agency she founded. The meeting was about expansion into more areas of the pacific northwest- mainly Portland and Eugene, Oregon. She was confident she could talk the investors into it, she believed in the work and she got results.   
Jeff had died in a DUI collision while on duty about three months after she returned. Her do-over. This magical second chance that she was wishing for while clutching her baby waiting for a bomb to drop. Jeff junior was over five years old now, and so full of energy and laughs and a sense of exploration. He was nothing like his father, thankfully.   
She was mad at first, when she came back, that Mac wasn’t there to give her a mission. She waited almost a year for contact before giving up. And in that time she found stable work, kept in shape, and learned all the insanity and joy of being a single mother. She learned that she did still care, and could still make a difference even without the director. After the second year she realized that this was better than taking orders from the director. Now she could do what was right.   
She caught herself smirking in her reflection of the glass, pulled her phone out of her pocket and sent a text to her wife “love you” with a kiss face emoji. The phone pinged back almost instantly “love you too Carly-bee” with three hearts and a cartoon bee. 

—————————————————————————————————————————-

Grace laughed and chugged another five hour energy drink. “What proxy server is he even using? Fucking amateur.”  
She was sitting cross legged on the floor of an apartment, clacking away at the keys of her laptop. Comfortable in a smiley face T-shirt and sweatpants, her hair in two braids. The room was filled with a couple couches and multiple desktop computer and laptops covered in stickers, bags of junk food, and various equipment, and posters on the wall from movies, hacker groups and bands. Her roommates all typing away at their own computers, respectively, aside from a heavy set twenty something playing counterstrike.   
She chuckled again to herself and said to no one in particular “it’s time to get the band back together” as she typed the words find your team and hit send.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> season 4 episode 2

*****

The third message appeared as suddenly was the previous, only this time it was while he was writing the next installment of his Tourists series. He thought the keyboard was broken, or perhaps dusty, and then his manuscript began ERASING ITSELF.  
“3468 find your team, then I will contact.”  
He printed the page out and showed it to his extremely confused neighbor Mrs. Gunderson, who confirmed that she saw the text too and advised that Grant get some sleep.  
That night he booked a plane back to Seattle. According to social media all of their hosts were still there; Trevor was attending the university, Carly was making headlines for her advocacy work, Marcy he knew was at Swedish Medical Center, and Phillip, well Phillip he assumed. He kicked himself for not becoming FBI after all because the data base sure made things easier. Had they just arrived? Would they remember him or did he exist to them?

He decided to approach Marcy first; she would be the easiest to get to. All he needed to do was pretend to be a patient. And if he was wrong and the message was some kind of joke, well then she’d be the most understanding.  
He booked a hotel nearby; nothing fancy, just a moderate business suite with a desk and tow beds pushed together. It had the perfect view of the hospital so he could stake out her routine, determine her work schedule and ideal shift- one that wasn’t busy but not suspiciously slow, and make his move.  
After a week of tailing her, it was time. He stuffed the last bite of his vegan donut into his mouth and walked toward the hospitals large double doors.  
As soon as he entered the lobby he fell to his knees and clutched his stomach “Oww! Oh god- My stomach! Please, someone!”  
The on call receptionist rushed to his side, asking him to calm down and to sign in.  
“It’s my left side, its like daggers!” He continued, wailing.  
The receptionist paged for a nurse and voila; Marcy appeared. He couldn’t tell if she recognized him. She seemed to pause, but he was quickly shuffled into a room and then she disappeared.  
Grant inventoried the exam room; seemed generic. He wasn’t sure why he did that every time and chalked it up to an old habit dying hard. Traveler training taught you to assess every room you are in; look for escape routes and look for supplies. He thought about pocketing some bandaids since he’d forgotten to get some at the store and he was prone to paper cuts. These had the cartoon snoopy on them. He stuffed a handful into his coat pocket and was almost caught as Marcy swooped back into the room holding a chart.  
“OK Mr.Maclaren, my name is Marcy and I will be your attending nurse until Doctor Ramirez can see you. Can you tell me more about these stomach pains? When they started and how you’d describe the pain?”  
Grant stared at her, and she stared back impatiently.  
“Yes so it’s a sharp pain, like a stabbing- right here below my rib.” He gestured to his side, to which Marcy began prodding the area with her forefingers “does this hurt?”  
“Only when you poke it.”  
“How long have you been experiencing this pain Mr. Maclaren?”  
“Oh it’s hard to say… probably around year 2420. All the yeast really builds up.”  
Marcy furrowed her brow, sizing him up, “Mac?”  
“It’s me Marcy!”  
Marcy lunged forward to hug him with all her strength, “Holy shit Mac I can’t believe it’s really you! I had no idea- I didn’t know if anyone made it or if I had made it.”  
“I didn’t either! I just got this weird message. Can we go somewhere else and talk?”  
“Yeah there’s a diner around the corner. I’ll meet you there in an hour?”  
Grant nodded, hugging her again, flooded with nostalgia. She still smelled the same; lilacs and sterile gauze. “I missed you.”  
“Oh Mac, I missed you too.”

The only thing on the menu that was vegan was the French fries, so Grant ordered those and a cup of coffee black, because they only had cows milk. He nestled himself into a red leather covered booth towards the back, near the spinning neon pie display and an advertisement for jalapeño slammers, whatever they were.  
Marcy came in still wearing her pale pink hospital scrubs, and in addition, an oversized mens wool cardigan. She ordered a ginger tea from a waitress that obviously knew her and sat down across from him.  
“So, Marcy, how are things? You found David I see.”  
“Oh, yeah,” she blushed holding up her hands that were drowning in the sleeves “This is his sweater. Also…” she stretched her hand out to show him her engagement ring. It was a delicate entangling of silver that looked like vines and a blue stone in the center.  
“Congratulations! That’s great! Is David… I mean is David our David?”  
“Well he is my David, but no, it isn’t the David from the timeline. We met on a bus. And it’s been far less dramatic not having to explain crazy things like a brain injury suddenly healing or a room full of bags of blood.”  
“I bet.” He laughed.  
“What about you? How’s life? I mean… I came back four years ago like before, but you- how long have you been here? How did we stop Ingram? What happened after I-”  
“After you died? Grace sent me back, to stop the first traveler. The timeline was destroyed by a bomb so I assumed that everyone left behind just ceased to exist. I went back nineteen years.”  
“Wow. Nineteen years?”  
The waitress brought their drinks and fries, which Marcy began to eat without asking or breaking eye contact with Grant.  
“Yep. You know I really just stuck to my protocol five. Not so much my protocol four though; I have two daughters. Angie and Rebecca. At a certain point I just figured…” His voice trailed off into a shrug, “So who sent you back? How did you get sent back? Do you have any idea?”  
“No clue. I mean, I was hoping you could tell me. How did you know that I was me Marcy and not regular Marcy?”  
“It was the strangest thing; I haven’t heard anything even remotely related to the traveler program up until two weeks ago someone sent a message through my television that said to find my team. I didn’t believe it at first but it kept happening. They said they’d make contact once I found everyone.”  
“Sure but Mac that sounds like a trap.”  
“Maybe, but honestly? I guess I just want answers and the idea that you are all here I just- I just let excitement get the better of me.”  
“Are you an FBI agent? Do we have any sort of way of checking to see if -“  
“No, sorry, I uh… I went a different route this time. To be honest, I was tired. I’m an author, I write under a pen name. I write the uh Tourist series.”  
“That’s you ?! David reads those and I always give him shit for them because they are meant for teenagers. I’d never read them though.”  
“My audience is teenagers? You really think so? I don’t market them as specifically YA but-“  
Marcy interrupted him by tossing a fry at his face, “So who else have you talked to ?”  
“Just you, you’re the first. I was going to find the others after. I know where Trevor and Carly are and they can probably help me find Phillip.”  
Marcy shook her head “Bad news on that one boss, either Phillip didn’t make the transfer or he’s hopefully got a new host. I’ve seen this timelines Phillip and he is in rough shape.”  
Grant solemnly chewed his French fry and washed it down with a swig of coffee, “Well I’m sure we can find him, once we get the others.”

\------------------------------

When they saw Trevor in the hallway he threw his backpack on the floor and nearly tackled Maclaren. He didn’t need convincing, he knew the moment he saw them together.  
He gave Marcy such a bear hug that she felt her vertebrae pop.  
“Boss, Marcy; I - I can’t believe you’re here. Did you just get here? What happened? Do we have a mission?”  
“It’s a little weirder than that, but If you can peel yourself away from school we can explain in the car? We’re on our way to grab Carly and then we can discuss everything.”  
“Wait Carly is here too? And Phillip?”  
Marcy frowned softly, “We don’t know who Phillips host is… Or if he made it… I mean, misfires happen… but..”  
Grant interjected, “But we are going to figure it out. The director probably put him in a new host all things considered.”  
Trevor scratched his chin in thought “IF it was the director who saved us.”  
Marcy put her hands on her hips “Do you think it was someone else? That this is a trap?”  
Trevor shook his head, “I feel like if this were a trap they would have killed us by now- Or why save us at all? I came back at my original tell. Fight was exactly the same but little things in this timeline were off. Grace wasn’t there, my locker changed… nothing significant. I’ve had no reason to feel like my life was in danger. I even joined a cooking class and now I can make this thing called Osso Bucco. All of my tastebuds were dancing.”  
“And your time lapses? Did they…”  
“I still get them, but not that often… And they don’t last as long. I’m not sure if they will come back stronger, there’s been no change… I rewrote my original design with some modifications, and built it into a non surgical ear piece. Everyone just thinks I’m sorta deaf, haha. The lab here is sufficient for what I need, although it is a lot slower without any of our future tech.”

Grant apologized when he turned the key in the ignition of his rental SUV and the radio immediately came on blaring Taylor Swift. His daughter Rebecca got him into it. He turned it down, but not off.  
He worried internally that Carly would see the kind of people they were now, how soft they had become, and decide it wasn’t worth the risk. Was he a leader now? Could he command? Make difficult choices without hesitation? Was there even going to be missions?  
Carly’s office was twenty minutes away from the school, but they hit traffic. Trevor texted his friend to check in on his cat and feed her the special grain free food he’d left on the counter. Marcy checked in with David and let him know she’d “run into an old friend and won’t be home til late” and not to worry about dinner. Grant ignored a call from his publicist. 

Carlys assistant told her she had some friends waiting in the lobby. She was confused, because other than her wife no one would visit her at work. She didn’t say it was her wife, she said friends. She didn’t have friends. She had other parents from the PTA, she had clients, co workers, acquaintances… Her wife’s friends.  
“What do they look like?”  
Her assistant shifted her posture nervously, “Uh… A forty something guy with dark hair, well dressed… a younger guy with a backpack… and a blonde woman?”  
“Did they say what they wanted?”  
“No… they just said they were friends. And that you guys all met…traveling?”  
Carly spit out her coffee on the word traveling, “Sorry, what? They are downstairs?”  
“Yes… Do you need a napkin?”  
Carly rolled her eyes and wiped the coffee spittle from her mouth and blouse before briskly walking out to the elevator. The clop of her signature black designer heels was something her staff all recognized and both feared and admired. She ran a fiercely tight ship and took no bullshit. She also wondered if a tide pen would get the coffee stain out of her Ted Baker blouse.  
The elevator doors slid open to the lobby and sitting on the L-shaped settee was Mac, Trevor and Marcy.  
“I can’t believe you guys are really here”  
Grant smiled “Carly, we-“  
Carly held up her slender finger to stop him, “Now please leave.”  
The three were collectively stunned, but Grant continued “Carly it’s us. The us from the first mission timeline. Everyone got saved somehow and I got this message and-“  
“Did I stutter? I need you to leave. Whatever you are selling, I don’t want it. I have a life now. I have my son, I have a loving wife. I have a company and a home and all the traveler program ever brought me was bullshit.”  
“Missed you too” Marcy muttered under her breath. Trevor shrunk down in his seat with the look of a scolded puppy.  
“Carly, someone saved you. Probably the director. Aren’t you curious why we are being brought back? Or what might happen if you say no? You could be overwritten either way.”  
Carly’s gaze met the floor as she paused to think it over. She was so mad her fists and jaw clenched. Un-fucking-believable.  
“I was brought back at my original tell. Why didn’t anyone come then? Huh? Why wasn’t I given a mission then?”  
Trevor sighed “We didn’t know if anyone else made it. I didn’t know what happened. There were no messengers, no other travelers. I thought it was some kind of glitch.”  
Grant stood up to approach Carly, putting his hands delicately on her shoulders, “Carly, I thought I was alone. I truly missed you- All of you. I had no idea you were alive until I got a message. Now we don’t know who sent it, but it led me to you and I have to assume that it’s the reason we are all here in this timeline. I don’t think our work is done.”

The four of them sat in Grant’s hotel room, discussing possible explanation and theories, and occasionally arguing about if the traveller program hurt or helped the future. They collectively agreed that they worried the future wasn’t any better but they had no way of knowing.  
“Boss have you gotten any more messages from your mystery contact since finding us?” Trevor asked, grabbing another slice of pizza from the box on the bed.  
Grant checked his phone again, “Nothing so far. But they did say I’d have to find my whole team. So they might not reach out until we find out what happened to 3326.”  
Marcy turned away from the computer she was using to face the group, “I have a theory… So the original tell he was about to die from an overdose, right? Well I’ve seen this timelines Phillip, and he is alive, and so is his roommate Stephen. So something had to have happened to prevent their death.”  
Trevor crossed his arms “Yeah but this timeline is different. You’ve seen it yourself, things are slightly askew. They may have bought the drugs from someone else.”  
“I thought about that,” she continued “but David said Stephen got clean shortly after and moved to the midwest. What if the director put 3326 into Stephen instead.”  
Carly scoffed, “Why would it do that? Stephen was an addict too; that’s why he wasn’t considered as a host in the first place.”  
“Maybe Stephen was a better candidate for recovery.”  
Grant washed his pizza down with his soda, “OK, so how do we find this Stephen?”  
Marcy gestured to her laptop, “I’ve been trying to access his social media but it’s all private. I think our best option is to find Phillip and see if he has an address or a phone number since they were friends. If I ask David where to find him it won’t be suspicious, I can say it’s a patient follow up.”  
“OK then team, let’s meet back here tomorrow morning, ten AM. Carly and I will source supplies for the trip, Marcy you and Trev talk to Phillip and find a bead on Stephen. Try to see if Phillip remembers Stephen acting strangely, or mentioning anything historical. It still could be a dead end.”


	3. episode 3

******

“Marcy it just isn’t a safe place to go. I don’t like the idea of you going there alone especially.” David was pacing.  
“But sweetie I won’t be alone, I’m going with my friend Trevor.”  
Trevor waved hello from the doorway of the apartment. David instinctively waved back and then caught himself, “Who are you again?”  
“I’m Trevor, nice to meet you. Im a student at the university, I’m doing a research program on addiction treatment. Marcy is my professional liaison.”  
“Look, we aren’t going to talk to anyone else. And if it feels too dangerous we won’t go in. But you said it yourself, this kid deserves a chance. And maybe if I show him that I care, and bring him these antibiotics, it’ll make him warm up to the idea of your detox plan.”  
David reluctantly nodded, “I guess it’s worth a try. But are you sure you can’t wait until I can go with you?”  
Marcy pursed her lips, shaking her head slowly no and she sighed, “But I will keep my phone on me and check in right after, OK?”  
“OK.”

"So you and David, eh? Thats sweet. You guys remind me of me and my wife."  
"I didn't know you were ever married. I guess with all the missions, and the protocols, you and I never had much time to talk about our lives."  
"Yeah, it all seems silly now. But i'm thankful for a chance to get to know you better. Are you excited about the wedding? You met his family?"  
"Nervous, I'm nervous. I small part of me always worries that somehow I'm going to get him killed again." She felt her eyes start to swell.  
"Oh no, " Trevor reassured her, "These are different circumstances altogether. Try to let yourself enjoy every moment you have."

The address was for an abandoned two story house, with boarded up windows, paint peeling, and old bullet holes gathering moss in the wood. An intimidating man in a du-rag leaned against the porch railing outside, anxiously scanning the neighborhood, his hand kept on his belt.  
The entire neighborhood was dilapidated, though it was early enough that some children were playing barefoot a few feet away, bouncing a ball they found in someones yard.  
Trevor insisted they take a meditative deep breath in the car first, at the perplexity of their cab driver, who was eager to leave.  
They walked up to the front steps of the house, which made the man in the du-rag straighten his posture to size them up, “Think you in the wrong place.”  
Trevor hung back a few steps to see all possible entrances to the house. Marcy took a few steps closer to the man, “Please, I think my friend is in there and -“  
“No he ain’t.”  
Marcy looked puzzled, “I just want to check and see.”  
“Lady, ain’t no one in there got friends. You don’t look like the type. This ain’t no hipster ass urban experience.”  
Trevor produced a small wad of cash from his pocket and handed it to the man, “five minutes. Please.”  
The man sighed, palming the money, “Five minutes.”

They both tried to step lightly. The floorboards were moldy and likely to give out. Every room was scattered chaos; blankets laid out, garbage, syringes, crack pipes. Holes in the wall from someones first. Peeling wallpaper from the nineteen-seventies. Blood stains long forgotten. People, like zombies, muttering to themselves and each other.  
The smell was pungent. Like burnt vinegar. Trevor held his hand over his nose as one of the living dead passed by blowing a large grey cloud of smoke. In the kitchen a woman seemed the most coherent; she was smoking a cigarette and aggressively scrubbing an old stainless steel pan with a toothbrush and humming.  
Marcy cautiously approached, “Hey, we’re looking for our friend…Maybe you’ve seen him? Mid twenties, shoulder length blonde hair, nose ring.”  
She didn’t stop scrubbing, “You a cop?”  
“No,” Trevor assured here, “Not cops. Just friends.”  
She squinted at them both, took a long drag of her cigarette which knocked the ash right into the pot she was cleaning, and motioned to the stairs leading upward to the second floor.

Upstairs was more of the same, Marcy shuddered when she saw a woman sleeping next to a baby. In the third room she saw a familiar green jacket blanketing a slender body and unwashed hair. Beside him a crumpled bottle of water, a tin box of syringes and rubber ties, cotton balls, a bent spoon… a few lighters.  
“Phillip?”  
Trevor frowned, hearing Marcy he’d entered the room and felt flush with disappointment.  
“Phillip, wake up OK? It’s me the nurse from the other day, I brought you some medicine.”  
She placed a firm hand on his side and tried to rock him awake. She pulled a small flashlight from her bag and checked his pupils and his pulse.  
“He must have just dosed.”  
Trevor rubbed the back of his neck, “Do you have anything on you that will wake him up?”  
“No…I don’t know. Well, Narcan but it’s not exactly a pleasant alarm clock. I’m not sure either of us want to fight him right now. Maybe this was a dead end. Maybe we should try getting the address for Stephen from the school they went to.”  
Trevor kneeled down next to them, “I hate to be the bearer of bad news but 3326 isn’t in Stephen.”  
Marcy raised her eyebrow, “How could you possibly know that-“  
Trevor raised his hand to brush away a lock of Phillips hair, exposing a small tattoo on his neck- just below his ear; the numbers 3 3 2 6.”  
“Oh fuck.”  
Marcy pushed her hair back as she formulated a plan, “OK, OK, help me get him upright.”  
Trevor hoisted Phillip into a sitting position, keeping an arm on him to keep him propped as Marcy slapped his pale face a few times just hard enough to get a reaction, “Come on Phillip, come on.”  
She deftly readied the Narcan injection, warning Trevor to hold him still. Once the drug hit his blood Phillip gasped for breath, and lunged violently forward, knocking over Marcy.  
“Hold him down!”  
Trevor leaped to hold Phillip in a muy-thai style body lock, which seemed like overkill as Phillip’s frail body squirmed underneath.  
“Phillip, Phillip it’s me. It’s Trevor. I’m here to help you buddy.”  
“Fuck you old man”

————————————————————————

“Well this is a supreme fuck up!” Grant swung his arms wildly to articulate his point, “What the fuck are we gonna do with him like this?”  
“I can fucking hear you.” Phillip called from the bathroom, where they’d zip-tied him to the radiator.  
“This is unacceptable Phillip!” Grant called back.  
“C’mon boss, none of us knew- We all thought we were alone. He didn’t have any support..” Trevor pleaded.  
“For four fucking years, Trev?” Carly had been sitting by the window, texting her wife that she was staying late at work, hoping no one saw her coming in and out of a cheap motel all day with some guy. The last thing she needed was that kind argument. The last thing she wanted was for her wife not to trust her.  
Trevor grimaced, “He is our friend and he needs help. Marcy what do you think we should do?”  
“I think we should do what we should have done the first time, and book him into detox and then rehab.”  
Grant scoffed, “He’s our historian. And if there are missions? How is he supposed to go into the field from the Betty Ford clinic?”  
“Well,” Marcy spoke calmly but with a sense of authority, “We would just have to arrange it that his treatment center could be like a remote ops base. He wouldn’t be able to come on mission, but help remotely, at least for the first six months.”  
“And you can arrange this?”  
“Yeah boss, I have connections within the hospital.”

The night at the hotel was rough. Marcy had offered to stay, but Grant sent them all home. Phillip’s withdrawal symptoms weren’t the worst yet, but they were starting. He was sweating like crazy and couldn’t get comfortable. One minute he was freezing cold, the next he felt like a volcano. He was nauseous, and itchy.  
Grant tried to ignore him for the first few hours so he could sleep, but pretending he didn’t care wasn’t working. He was angry, and disappointed, but having lived in this time line long enough now he knew more about how hard it all was. Funnily enough in the future it was horrendous but everyone had the same problem. The same common goal. The simplicity sort of over arched any other need or want. They were just surviving. Now what they had was a life; and all the strangeness that went with it.  
He climbed out of bed and walked to the bathroom, grabbed a hand towel and ran it under cold water to hold against Phillip’s forehead.  
“I am upset Phillip, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see you well.”  
Phillip half grunted, lighting a cigarette with shaky hands.  
Grant pulled the cigarette from his mouth, discarding it into the toilet. “This is a non-smoking room.”  
“Did you really get messages from the director?”  
“I dunno. Maybe? Someone who knows who we are, so I have to assume it’s someone or something from our first timeline.”  
“When I woke up, back in my tell, I thought about taking the shot and just dying.” Phillip laughed dryly, “But I saw Stephen and I just couldn’t let him die again. I called the paramedics, and he got better. He tried to get me clean too but I just didn’t want to. I gave up.”  
“What about coordinates or tells? Any visions from other timelines?”  
“No, but that might be the heroin. It sorta drowns everything out.” He laughed again, before jerking up to vomit into the trashcan.  
Grant used the towel to dab his face clean, and helped tie back his hair. “We’re gonna get through this, you are going to get better.”  
“What for, boss? So we can keep fucking things up worse than before? We caused a bomb to obliterate and entire timeline. We failed. We didn’t save anyone!”  
“We made a mistake and we are getting something rare- another chance. Just like you are getting. And hey, if you really don’t want that you can feel free to die of an overdose in some flop house.”  
“Thanks.” He chuckled, rolling his eyes.  
Grant took pity and lit him a cigarette, then exited the room to the snack machine down the hall for a bag of potato chips.  
He put in his change and pressed A-4, for the Lays original, but the bag got stuck between the glass and the shelf. He pressed the buttons again, then tried the coin release.  
“You gotta smack it hard like the Fonz.”  
Grant looked up to see Grace looming next to him. She made a fist and effortlessly hit the machine right in the center, knocking the chips into the trough below.  
“Uh thanks?”  
“You should be thanking me MacLaren. I’m the reason your team is alive.”

“Grace, why didn’t you just send me a goddamn email like a normal person?!”  
“Who the hell said we are normal people Maclaren? We aren’t normal. We’re time travelers from the future.” She shoved a handful of chips into her mouth and kept talking, “Anyway that would have been boring. This is some cloak and dagger shit. Aaaaand your email isn’t secure.”  
Grant thought better than to debate anything with Grace, but he had so many questions. “How did you do it?”  
“To be totally honest I’m not even sure. We’d just sent you back and in the immortal words of David Lee Roth I thought ‘might as well jump’.”  
She offered him the last chip which he refused, “I can only assume part of it had to do with the fact that I created the director. So without me, it wouldn’t exist- It needs me in order to avoid some very complicated paradox that I don’t have the patience to explain. But to sum it up, imagine time is a lasagne.”  
“A lasagne?”  
“Yes. You know, a noodle sandwich.”  
“Ok…”  
“Each noodle is a time line, and connecting all those time lines is cheese. When the Director sent you back, he sent you through a piece of cheese to the noodle below, and I sorta just piggy backed the rest of us in that cheese. Consciousness isn’t governed by the same laws as physicality; it can travel throughout time; that’s how travelers get sent back. In this lawless other that exists between noodles.”  
“The cheese dimension.”  
“Yes. I saved everyone I could, but I didn’t know their exact tells, so I wrote an algorithm into some nanites that would take statistical information based on the facts we did know- the time and the date, and it would do the rest. Because we were about to be obliterated by a nuclear missile, it fell within the bounds of the Director’s moral guidelines and bingo-bingo it worked. Again, you are welcome.”  
“Why didn’t you come to me when you first arrived? You’ve been here for years- Knew about us for years.”  
“Well to be honest I didn’t. I didn’t know it worked that is. I knew it worked for me, but something was off. This Grace never took the job at the high school. So I wasn’t sure if we’d landed into the same dimension, or multiple dimensions, or if we’d all landed. I’ve spent the last four years assembling a team of hackers and programmers so that I could do the most important part of my mission.”  
“Finding us.”  
“No you fucking narcissist. So that I could recreate the director and find a way to contact the future. If I can successfully build the director, he could potentially be out link back to the future, which means finding out if anything we did helped and possibly getting us help and/or information.”  
“What do you need us for?”  
“I need a historian to give me all the possible lineage for archivists that could still be alive in the future, a tactician to help me acquire the test subjects, I need a medic to help with some surgeries and I need and engineer to help me build nanites that can withstand carrying DNA with encoded data with the prehistoric components we have to work with and I needed you to collect them for me. So thanks, you have been very helpful.”  
“So that’s it- You put on this dog and pony show just to use my team?”  
“You are welcome!”  
Grant was visibly exasperated so Grace offered a high-five, which was met with a seething glare.  
“Look Maclaren, if I can get the Director back online… When I get the Director back online you will probably get a new fun mission to run off and do. Or at least you’ll get to know if the future is still reduced to a few boring ass domes that smell like dead skin.”  
“Yeah, yeah. I’m gonna have to run this by my team. Things are a little chaotic.”  
“I bet. Phillip looks like shit. You should probably check on him.”  
Grant huffed, “Where do you want to meet next?”  
“I got a safe house.” She handed him a card with an address, and wrote down the number for her burner cell. “Come by in two days, the password is Firefly.”  
“We’ll see.”  
“Oh and Maclaren… Can I ask you something?”  
“What?”  
“In your second book, Tourists; leap of faith, that bitchy but hot egghead cyborg that accidentally gets them trapped in the submarine, that’s supposed to be me, right?”  
“Goodnight Grace.”

——————————————————————————————


	4. 4 pt 1 tbc

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> adding more later

Phillip couldn’t stand let alone walk. Marcy had come to the hotel that morning, insisted he shower, and replaced his clothes with a a fresh t-shirt and sweat pants. She gave him a pair of slip on shoes, and a bag of socks and boxers, and some of David’s old hoodies. He was ashamed that she had to help wash him, though she seemed un-phased, and her stoic quietness made him uneasy and tense. He’d asked for his boots, hoping she hadn’t found the folded paper packet of heroin tucked in a secret pocket between the sole and the insole, but she had, and rightfully scolded him for asking. She made him a cup of tea, which he struggled to drink, then dropped him off outside the detox center where David was waiting with a wheelchair to take him in. She didn’t say goodbye, she just sorta looked at him sadly and wished him good luck.  
Ever fiber of his being was screaming, but when he tried to talk his mouth was too dry to choke out a word. His head pounded.  
David let him smoke a cigarette first, Phillips hands trembling.  
“You know man I’m really glad you’ve decided to take this step. I was pretty worried about you. They’ll take real good care of you in here, and it’s gonna suck, but try to be nice to the nurses, OK? They mean well even if it feels like torture.”  
Phillip smoked his cigarette to the filter, “Still considering running away… Or at least rolling away in the direction of my dealer.”  
“Not funny, Phillip. Try to focus on the bright side, you get through this, you get healthy- You can have any life you want.”  
The admitting nurse was a man in his fifties who was gruff in temperament and talked to David as if Phillip wasn’t there. How much has he been using, how long has he been using, does he have any known complications, any known history of depression or suicidal thoughts. Phillip didn’t remember answering any of those questions but David seemed to know all the same.  
They made him sign an admittance form. David promised to come visit in a few days. The gruff nurse wheeled him off to another nurse who wheeled him into a sterile room with a hospital cot and a bathroom, made him take a couple pills, and left. Locking the door behind her.  
It was really going to happen and there was no backing out. He was about to be the sickest he’d ever been. 

————————————————————————————————

The safe-house Grace lived in was a converted textile factory two hours drive out of town. They all arrived separately, per her instructions. The outside was unremarkable, but the inside looked like a hacker club house wet dream.  
The main floor was rows of computer stations, encompassed in servers that ran along the walls, and fans to keep them cool. There was a kitchen, a game room, and a bathroom with a strobe light feature and a giant poster of Nikkola Tesla. The Upstairs was built like a loft, with one metal staircase up to the ledge that towered above them. Thats where the meeting room was, and a room of bunk beds, and one more large room that Grace herself slept in.  
They sat on the couches in the meeting room, where she’d displayed her blueprints and notes on her upgrade ideas for the Director. Grace couldn’t help herself from putting her hand on Trevor’s thigh, which made him wiggle. She was just so happy to see him again. She’d seen him before, from a distance. But she hadn’t let herself truly believe it was the same him until now.  
Trevor cleared his throat, “I mean, yeah it does make sense. The whole traveler program was started when we began our work into memory transmission. We discovered that memories weren’t just imprints, but access portals to specific points in time. It took decades of research to figure out how to lock onto a memory let alone transport to the memory, but person to person consciousness transition had developed pretty far. Effectively Grace told the director to remember us, pulling our consciousness into itself, then shooting us out through its memory, that changed faster than quantifiable time because Mac was both just arriving in the past and at the same time, had completed his mission years prior. It must have been like a slingshot, and because it was being updated with the new information from Mac, was able to determine the coordinates for our hosts. The timeline we were in didn’t explode, it imploded. It sucked itself back into itself then unravelled back out with the updated information.”  
“Like upgrading its OS.” Grace chimed in  
Mac furrowed his brow “So this is still our original timeline?”  
Grace smacked her lips, “Yes and no… It’s the root of our timeline, chopped off and re-sprouted. Not fully separate but not the same.”  
“So what are the odds that the traveler program exists? That there are people in the future that have this information or that there even is a future?”  
Trevor was listening intently, “Not sure I want to do that math right now, boss, but it can’t hurt to try. I for one still want to save the world.”  
Carly felt too blindsided by the last few days to be able to relax, and had been walking from one side of the room the other while they talked.  
Marcy agreed, folding her hands in her lap, “If we can help, I think we should. Grace did save us after all.”  
Carly stopped pacing, leaning her back against the window frame, “I’ll be honest, I do miss the action. But we can’t just go snatching up innocent people so you can start messing with their blood.”  
“I’m not going to hurt them!” Grace grabbed the tablet in front of her and opened a file marked CBC Labs. “I’ve got a shell company, we use that and pose it as clinical trials. We get as many candidates to volunteer as we can, and see what shakes loose. The nanobites won’t hurt them, and people have subjected themselves to a whole lot worse for less money. We get some samples, we send out some samples, do some fishing.”  
“CBC?” Marcy wondered.  
“Covert blood collection, duh! But on paper its clinical biology center which is generic and non threatening.“  
Carly wasn’t convinced, “Who says we even need to know about the future? Or need the director at all? It didn’t fix anything! Why can’t we just enjoy what we have now, live out our protocol five like we were supposed to and be done with it. No one has come looking for us.”  
Grant straightened his posture, “Well, we don’t know. We don’t know anything. This could even be a waste of time but I agree that we wouldn’t be here without Grace and I’m still onboard with my duty to the program. To humanity. If it turns out that ‘Hey!- Everythings sunshine and rainbows’ Then even better. And it might be. But you’ve seen the news Carly. Humanity keeps making the same mistakes that destroyed us. You’ve seen the status of the ozone layer. Hell these people elected a reality TV swindler to be president for goddsakes. Besides, we can’t make any moves yet; we’ve just got to prepare. So think it over. In the meantime; Grace you’ll get us set up with I.D badges and uniforms, Trevor can start getting to work on the nanobites… Marcy how is Phillip doing?”  
“He’s still in the worst of it. I can’t see him being any use until he’s detoxed at least a week. If I had my old gear I could have boosted his system to hand the recovery, but he’s just got to grit though it. I get updates from his nurses everyday so I can give you a better report tonight. “  
“I’d like to visit him, when I can.” Trevor offered.  
Marcy smiled sadly, “I’m sure he’d like that.”

———————————————————————————————

Carly came in through the door loudly, dropping her back on the side table, and kicking of her shoes toward the direction of the living room. Her wife, Maria, came to greet her with a kiss, “Long day, babe?”  
“The longest.”  
It smelled like sweet and spicy cajun seasoning and she could hear the faint sizzle of oil in a pan, which instantly made her stomach growl. “Where’s junior?”  
“Oh he’s at a play date with his friend Yvonne. You know those two are inseparable as it is, but her dad just bought her some new game and they are obsessed. So I thought I would cook us a romantic dinner for two.”  
Carly wrapped her arms around Maria, generously kissing her neck, cheek and collar bone , “Mmmhmm that was a fantastic idea.”  
After dinner they sat on the couch to talk; Maria had kicked her feet up into Carly’s lap which was her way of asking for a foot rub, to which Carly happily obliged.  
“Babe you seem kinda far away tonight, do you want to talk about it?”  
Carly forced a smiled, “Nah, just have to do something at work that might be a lot of work for nothing. Or it might change everything…”  
Maria wiggled her toes, “My Carly-bee, I know whatever it is you will do what’s right. You always do. And you’ll be tough as hell doing it. Now keep rubbing please.”

———————————————————————————————-

Phillips blanket was soaking with sweat. The cot felt like a prickly and slimy stomach, so he’d crawled down to the floor by the bathroom door, huddled in a fetal position on the cold tile. His legs ached, so he’d try to push them against the wall as hard as he could and when that didn’t work he’d try punching them. He could really see himself now, covered in bruises and scabs, in this blue lit coffin. He had no idea how long he’d been in there. He only seemed to feel progressively worse. A nurse had come to give him a pill and disinfect the cuts on his knuckles from hitting the wall. She said she’d bring him a new blanket but it felt like days ago.  
He was hallucinating; not timelines or coordinates, but disembodied voices and sounds reverberating through him. He tried to sleep, but would jerk awake, feeling like someone or something was exploding through the walls. He thought he heard sirens.  
He wanted to slice all of his veins open.  
He called out for the nurse, begged for a fix, just one hit of smack. He made promises he knew he wouldn’t keep, promised if he could have a taste he would stay clean after, promised if he could have a taste he’d manage his habit which he had never actually done. He’d lied to Marcy and Trevor and all of them when he was using in the first timeline. Always lied about how much he was taking and how often and how he could control it. The biggest lie of all was when he said he didn’t like it and blamed his host.  
He’d been through withdrawal before, when he quit the eyedrops cold turkey, and he had definitely not been moderate with those. But it wasn’t as intense. That felt like a bad flu- This felt like being roasted alive.  
He began to shiver so hard he bit his lip, and pulled the blanket around him, his mouth filling with bitter blood.  
He was clean though, for a few months and then- and then he relapsed. He said it was a one time thing because he couldn’t make them understand how hard it was. And then the world ended.  
Phillip felt a contraction through his abdomen, uncontrollably puking onto the ground in front of him, followed by blacking out. 

————————————————————————————————-

He woke back up to the sound of a chair being dragged against the linoleum. He was back in his cot, with two clean blankets. He tried to open his eyes but they felt sticky, and had to rub them for a few minutes.  
“Hey kiddo. How are you feeling?”  
Trevor looked at him with his big kind eyes and held out a can of cocacola. “They said I could bring you a soda.”  
Phillip tried to sit up but struggled. His body a mass of aching. “Cigarette.” Was all he could mumble.  
“Well ok, but you know you are going to have to quit these too. We can just do this one addiction at a time.”  
Trevor lit him a cigarette and held it up to his mouth to take a drag. He was so tired, his eyelids felt three times as heavy.  
“You’ve been in here eight days…You get transferred to the rehab tomorrow. I’ll be able to visit you once a week there. “  
Phillip felt himself falling asleep and tried to say thank you, unsure if the words actually came out or if Trevor was really there at all. 

Trevor put on the cigarette and took the chair and the coca cola out of the room to meet Marcy in the hall, who was talking to the attending nurse.  
“So you’ve been doing sodium valproate thousand milligrams a day, plus a two milligrams of clonazepam … and the tramadol? Is he completely tapered off that too?”  
The nurse confirmed, and added that they had also started a naltrexone regiment for the cravings.  
“Thanks Hank.”  
Trevor took a deep breath “Our boy looks like hot garbage.”  
Marcy let slip out a laugh, “He sure does. But he is in good hands. Did you tell him he had a seizure?”  
Trevor shook his head, “Nah, he doesn’t need to know we were worried.”


End file.
